Retrovirus review – six degrees of freedom

A new indie game uses the classic Descent series as its inspiration, in what is the most exciting virus checker ever devised…

Retrovirus (PC) – more fun than Norton Anti-Virus

We’d like to pretend we don’t know why there’s no modern day equivalent to Descent, but unfortunately it’s pretty obvious. The games were extremely popular back in the mid-90s, with the original being a contemporary of Duke Nukem 3D and one of the first games to allow full freedom of movement in a complex 3D world. Part first person shooter and part flight sim the game was simply too complicated for its own good and there’s never been anything like for years.

We’re not trying to take a subtle dig at anyone or anything here, because it’s undeniable that flying around in 3D is a pretty complicated thing. When all notion of up and down ceases to have much meaning things can get very confusing very quickly, especially if you’re forced to control the game with a joypad.

Luckily indie developers don’t have to worry about that sort of thing and although Retrovirus is by no means a clone it does harken back to many of the best aspects of the old series. But where in Descent you were exploring non-descript mines and sci-fi corridors here you’re piloting a tiny little drone inside of a virus-filled PC.

This turns out to be a lot more exciting than watching a progress bar slowly creep across your screen, as the PC’s guts are visualised as gleaming sci-fi architecture and the virus as grotesque biological infestations.

Given that simple and immediately understandable set-up you’d think that was all the story you need, but for some reason developer Cadenza Interactive have ladled on the plot very thickly. We assume it was all meant to add to the immersion but the technobabble at the beginning almost makes you want to give up before you’ve had a chance to get frustrated by the controls.

Not that there’s anything wrong with them you understand, but there’s a definite learning curve here – which is no surprise given what you’re doing but Retrovirus does require a good hour or two’s wroth of patience to get to grips with. Although that alone is strangely refreshing in an age that often seems to value accessibility over actual gameplay.

Cleaning up has always been a lot more enjoyable and satisfying in video games than it is in real life and blasting away at the virus and the angry array of monsters it spawns is instantly engaging. There’s an odd sense of role reversal too, as you fight to reclaim a sterile mechanical environment by destroying the organic infection that by rights you should feel much more empathy for.

That thought quickly fades though as the virus starts to infect other friendly drones and the longer you take the more complicated your job becomes. It’s not hard to hose down the majority of the infection but unless you’re thorough it can all quickly spawn back in minutes.

A variety of energy weapons are you primary defence but they draw power from a fairly limited supply, that also has to run things like a cloaking device and turbo boost. This forces you to rely on speed and manoeuvrable rather than just overwhelming firepower, and the ‘six degrees of freedom’ offered by the controls are put to the test in the often roller-coaster like scenery.

And yet there’s not quite enough nuance in the action to fill out the entirety of the game, and with the lack of any substantial puzzles the combat does become a touch repetitive. The difficulty level is also highly variable, with some nasty bottlenecks – although nothing that completely ruins the experience.

Handily, the multiplayer options are many and varied, and almost make up for the lack of variation in the core gameplay. You can play the story campaign in co-op mode and the deathmach style competitive options is just as much fun as Descent used to be. There’s also a more involved team-based mode that seems to have been influenced by MOBAs such as League Of Legends, as you try to take out the enemy’s base amidst a flurry of computer-controlled drones and turrets.

After playing Retrovirus it becomes obvious that Descent’s other problem is that the concept didn’t really have anywhere else to go after improving the graphics. Moving in 3D and barrelling down mineshafts was its whole reason for being and nobody, including Cadenza, has been able to build beyond that.

As a restatement of everything that made the old games great this works very well, but we hope that if there’s a sequel that it starts to expand the concept and not just recreate it.

In Short: A worthy successor to the Descent legacy, but lacking the depth of gameplay that would’ve made it a classic of equal standing.

Pros: Great visuals and controls, with a freedom of movement not seen in other modern shooters. Excellent range of multiplayer modes, including both co-op and competitive.

Cons: Needlessly confusing story and overly dry dialogue. With few other distractions the combat eventually becomes repetitive. Uneven difficulty level.